Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

I understand this talent being in the prot tree but im a little confused to its viability and usage in prota tanking.

Divine Guardian
Rank 2/2

While Divine Shield is active 30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin.

Does Divine Shield still drop aggro while active? If not then its too powerful an ability for tanking.

Assuming it does still drop aggro then this ability its pointless when maintanking and only would be of some use when offtanking in raids.

Am I missing something here or is Divine Guardian specifically design for us to provide 12secs of 30% raid dmg reduction (within 30yards) when off-tanking a raid boss? I suppose it would have some use in PvP battlegrounds also but its it likely to be used more as a pvp talent than a pve raiding one?

Re: Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

This talent is a reason to pick a paladin for off-tanking instead of a druid, during the boss fights, most of them anyway, the offtank is dpsing. A feral druid is a better in dps than a prot pala or prot war but he offers only 5% crit. With this talent you could Protect the hole raid from some dmg or pop it with Hand of sacrifice on the MT to shild wall it.

Re: Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

Short Version: Nothing to see here, Folks. Just keep walking. Reckoning is that way, slightly more useful now, you should check it out.

Long Version:
Divine Shield now acts similar to the Warrior's Shield Wall ability;

Divine Shield3% of base mana, Instant cast, 5 min cooldown
Reduces all damage taken by 50% for 12 sec, but increases the time between your attacks by 50%. Once protected, the target cannot be made invulnerable by Divine Shield, Divine Protection or Hand of Protection again for 3 min.

Because it does not absorb all of the damage, it does not cause a loss of aggro and can safely be used when tanking.

Divine Guardian, thus, allows you to take 30% of the damage caused to your allies whenever you use this "Pally Shield Wall". In effect, you're providing a 'baby bubble' to everyone within 30 yards, taking the damage they normally would.

There are several gross oversights with this ability, and I am hoping Blizzard realizes what a useless piece of garbage it is. First, this is completely useless for tanks; no one in 30 yards of you should be getting damaged at any time since we AOE tank like nobody else.

What's that? Why not pop it just before a massive Boss AOE and save everyone? Sure, go ahead, for 2 talent points you can Divine Intervention without using a reagent. There's no way in hell we would ever want to subject ourselves to 30% of every hit delivered to every character within 30 yards. So there's actually no good PVE situation to use this in.

But what if you're Holy/Ret? Surely you can use this to baby-bubble to help the tank and off-tank? Besides the fact that you'll be taking substantial damage you are not geared to handle, your tank and off-tank should be geared well enough not to need a bubble. If you're Holy, you'd be better off spending the time and talent points making your healing better. Your tank will thank you. If you're Ret, you should be spending the time and talent points burning down the enemy instead of trying to protect people. Your tank will thank you.

Holy? Useless.
Ret? Useless.

So, for those of you at home keeping score, that's three strikes, one for each talent tree. Complete waste of 2 talent points, and it actually takes an ability we would want to use often (Shield Wall) and makes it suicidal. Good way to get yourself killed in PvP or Arenas too.

The only way this would ever become useful is if the damage was simply mitigated / ignored (IE: "While Divine Shield is active x% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is ignored.", as it is in the talent tree in my signature). No paladin should ever need to redirect damage to himself, and any situation where he would want to would result in so much damage he'd explode (or come very close, driving your Healers insane and OOM, whichever comes first.)

Re: Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

Short Version: Nothing to see here, Folks. Just keep walking. Reckoning is that way, slightly more useful now, you should check it out.

Long Version:
Divine Shield now acts similar to the Warrior's Shield Wall ability;

Divine Shield3% of base mana, Instant cast, 5 min cooldown
Reduces all damage taken by 50% for 12 sec, but increases the time between your attacks by 50%. Once protected, the target cannot be made invulnerable by Divine Shield, Divine Protection or Hand of Protection again for 3 min.

Because it does not absorb all of the damage, it does not cause a loss of aggro and can safely be used when tanking.

Divine Guardian, thus, allows you to take 30% of the damage caused to your allies whenever you use this "Pally Shield Wall". In effect, you're providing a 'baby bubble' to everyone within 30 yards, taking the damage they normally would.

There are several gross oversights with this ability, and I am hoping Blizzard realizes what a useless piece of garbage it is. First, this is completely useless for tanks; no one in 30 yards of you should be getting damaged at any time since we AOE tank like nobody else.

What's that? Why not pop it just before a massive Boss AOE and save everyone? Sure, go ahead, for 2 talent points you can Divine Intervention without using a reagent. There's no way in hell we would ever want to subject ourselves to 30% of every hit delivered to every character within 30 yards. So there's actually no good PVE situation to use this in.

But what if you're Holy/Ret? Surely you can use this to baby-bubble to help the tank and off-tank? Besides the fact that you'll be taking substantial damage you are not geared to handle, your tank and off-tank should be geared well enough not to need a bubble. If you're Holy, you'd be better off spending the time and talent points making your healing better. Your tank will thank you. If you're Ret, you should be spending the time and talent points burning down the enemy instead of trying to protect people. Your tank will thank you.

Holy? Useless.
Ret? Useless.

So, for those of you at home keeping score, that's three strikes, one for each talent tree. Complete waste of 2 talent points, and it actually takes an ability we would want to use often (Shield Wall) and makes it suicidal. Good way to get yourself killed in PvP or Arenas too.

The only way this would ever become useful is if the damage was simply mitigated / ignored (IE: "While Divine Shield is active x% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is ignored.", as it is in the talent tree in my signature). No paladin should ever need to redirect damage to himself, and any situation where he would want to would result in so much damage he'd explode (or come very close, driving your Healers insane and OOM, whichever comes first.)

No Tank will ever use Divine Shield in a fight, unless he wants to, you know... watch everyone wipe.

No Tank will ever use Divine Shield in a fight during an AOE attack, unless he wants to, you know, cook himself inside his shield.

Holy and Ret have no business diving into Prot for this ability for the rare situation where they would want to bubble their friends and soak up some damage. Turns your emergency bubble into a Pally pressure cooker.

The only way this is useful is if the damage 'directed at the paladin' has to get through the bubble first, in which case 30% of 0 is 0 and everyone is happy. Except Blizzard's copy editors, who should be shot for such a damn confusing wording...

Re: Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

Thats the idea, an aoe 30% Damage reduction which will be used when you can't tank. Example when you go through Gruul's Lair. You need to hold aggro if you are main tank or hateful tank but since Gruul needs only 2 tanks there will probably be a tank left doing nothing. In that case you will be able to at least do something special and cool.

Re: Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

Originally Posted by Vorpal

Thats the idea, an aoe 30% Damage reduction which will be used when you can't tank. Example when you go through Gruul's Lair. You need to hold aggro if you are main tank or hateful tank but since Gruul needs only 2 tanks there will probably be a tank left doing nothing. In that case you will be able to at least do something special and cool.

So... by that logic... Divine Guardian is only useful for when another tank steps up to take your place? Yeah, that's completely worth two talent points, to help replace myself in encounters. Awesome.

Re: Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

Re: Prot Tanking & Divine Guardian?

Originally Posted by Vorpal

I think i got an idea for the other thread.:P

Careful now, you don't want to end up like Applegarth, Lord Protector of Postboostington. What, you want to talk about how Paladins don't have a reactionary ability? We don't really need one, but it'd be nice to, you know... liven things up. At least we get Hammer and Shield of the Righteous to spam now.

Originally Posted by GrumpyJester

It's for PvP, and I love it 8)

I fail to see how it's useful at all; you bubble to protect yourself, not nuke yourself so everyone around you can live. I know Paladins are supposed to be honor-obsessed sacrificial religious fanatics, but this is a game and you don't get HKs for suicide bombing... not even a Night Elf virgin to /dance for you while you wait to rez.